He on his side too had waited a little, but then he had taken it
from her. "Yes, I guess I do rather like her."
Which she accepted for the first case she could recall of their
not being affected by a person in the same way. It came back
therefore to his pretending; but she had gone far enough, and to
add to her appearance of levity she further observed that, though
they were so far from a novelty, she should also immediately
desire, at Fawns, the presence of the Assinghams. That put
everything on a basis independent of explanations; yet it was
extraordinary, at the same time, how much, once in the country
again with the others, she was going, as they used to say at
home, to need the presence of the good Fanny. It was the
strangest thing in the world, but it was as if Mrs. Assingham
might in a manner mitigate the intensity of her consciousness of
Charlotte. It was as if the two would balance, one against the
other; as if it came round again in that fashion to her idea of
the equilibrium. It would be like putting this friend into her
scale to make weight--into the scale with her father and herself.
Amerigo and Charlotte would be in the other; therefore it would
take the three of them to keep that one straight. And as this
played, all duskily, in her mind it had received from her father,
with a sound of suddenness, a luminous contribution. "Ah,
rather! DO let's have the Assinghams."
"It would be to have them," she had said, "as we used so much to
have them. For a good long stay, in the old way and on the old
terms: 'as regular boarders' Fanny used to call it. That is if
they'll come."
"As regular boarders, on the old terms--that's what I should like
too. But I guess they'll come," her companion had added in a tone
into which she had read meanings. The main meaning was that he
felt he was going to require them quite as much as she was. His
recognition of the new terms as different from the old, what was
that, practically, but a confession that something had happened,
and a perception that, interested in the situation she had helped
to create, Mrs. Assingham would be, by so much as this,
concerned in its inevitable development? It amounted to an
intimation, off his guard, that he should be thankful for some
one to turn to. If she had wished covertly to sound him he had
now, in short, quite given himself away, and if she had, even at
the start, needed anything MORE to settle her, here assuredly was
enough. He had hold of his small grandchild as they retraced
their steps, swinging the boy's hand and not bored, as he never
was, by his always bristling, like a fat little porcupine, with
shrill interrogation-points--so that, secretly, while they went,
she had wondered again if the equilibrium mightn't have been more
real, mightn't above all have demanded less strange a study, had
it only been on the books that Charlotte should give him a
Principino of his own. She had repossessed herself now of his
other arm, only this time she was drawing him back, gently,
helplessly back, to what they had tried, for the hour, to get
away from--just as he was consciously drawing the child, and as
high Miss Bogle on her left, representing the duties of home, was
complacently drawing HER. The duties of home, when the house in
Portland Place reappeared, showed, even from a distance, as
vividly there before them. Amerigo and Charlotte had come in--
that is Amerigo had, Charlotte, rather, having come out--and the
pair were perched together in the balcony, he bare-headed, she
divested of her jacket, her mantle, or whatever, but crowned with
a brilliant brave hat, responsive to the balmy day, which Maggie
immediately "spotted" as new, as insuperably original, as worn,
in characteristic generous harmony, for the first time; all,
evidently, to watch for the return of the absent, to be there to
take them over again as punctually as possible. They were gay,
they were amused, in the pleasant morning; they leaned across the
rail and called down their greeting, lighting up the front of the
great black house with an expression that quite broke the
monotony, that might almost have shocked the decency, of Portland
Place. The group on the pavement stared up as at the peopled
battlements of a castle; even Miss Bogle, who carried her head
most aloft, gaped a little, through the interval of space, as
toward truly superior beings. There could scarce have been so
much of the open mouth since the dingy waits, on Christmas Eve,
had so lamentably chanted for pennies--the time when Amerigo,
insatiable for English customs, had come out, with a gasped
"Santissima Vergine!" to marvel at the depositaries of this
tradition and purchase a reprieve. Maggie's individual gape was
inevitably again for the thought of how the pair would be at
work.